About an hour before the Timberwolves tipped off against the Toronto Raptors on Friday night, April 5, at Target Center, Wolves coach Rick Adelman appeared concerned.

Adelman insisted he wasn't caught up in the anticipation of getting his 1,000th career win. He said he was more worried about his team "playing well."

Maybe it was the instincts of 22 years as an NBA head coach or maybe Adelman really knows his team. In either case, his intuition was accurate.

The Wolves did not play well during stretches of Friday's game, and Toronto walked off with a 95-93 victory in front of a disappointed crowd of 16,661 that was poised to celebrate Adelman becoming the eighth NBA coach with 1,000 wins.

"Our coach deserves this number, but we can't go out on the floor and think we're going to get it easily," said forward Andrei Kirilenko, speaking from 11 years of NBA experience. "We had enough effort but not enough focus, especially in the third and fourth quarter."

The only consolation for the Wolves (28-47) is that they don't have to wait long to atone for some key breakdowns. They can get Adelman to his milestone Saturday night at Target Center with a win over Detroit, a team they whipped by 23 points on March 26 in Auburn Hills, Mich.

If the Wolves hadn't missed 10 free throws, including three in the final minute, 53 seconds, Adelman already would have his milestone.

Two of those missed free throws came from Ricky Rubio.

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The second miss, with 1.7 seconds remaining, was the most painful, preventing the Wolves from tying the game at 94 after Rubio had driven the length of the court and drawn a foul on Toronto's DeMar DeRozan.

With the Raptors leading 94-92, Rudy Gay missed a jumper with 4.9 seconds left. Dante Cunningham snatched the rebound and gave the ball to Rubio, whose aggressive drive to the basket was overshadowed by his failure to convert both free throws. Rubio, a 78.5 percent free-throw shooter, made the first, then generated groans from the crowd when his second bounced off the rim.

"I take the fault on the missed free throw and the one earlier," a dejected Rubio said. "It's something I have to improve on. I'll keep working on that."

While Rubio bore the brunt of Friday's loss, the sentiment in the Wolves' locker room was that the outcome was decided long before he stepped to the line.

The Wolves had an 11-point lead midway through the third quarter. That's when the lack of focus Kirilenko alluded to seemed to take hold.

By the time the third quarter ended, Toronto trailed by two and had built enough momentum to make things interesting. Adelman, whose career record stands at 999-703, was not happy how his team broke down.

"We didn't execute very well at either end," he said. "I still thought we could have controlled our own destiny if we had taken care of the job in the third quarter. Once you get into the fourth quarter and it's close, it's anybody's game."

The Wolves never did solve Toronto's one-two punch of DeRozan and Gay, who scored 10 of his game-high 26 points in the fourth quarter. DeRozan got seven of his 25 in the fourth, including a crucial three-point play that caught the Wolves flatfooted with 2:13 to play.

Kirilenko was defending DeRozan when the 6-7 shooting guard slipped past him on a drive to the basket and the other four Wolves players failed to rotate. Adelman had tried Chase Budinger, Luke Ridnour and occasionally Cunningham on DeRozan without much success.

That is one of several reasons why Adelman is still looking for No. 1,000.

"We want to do it as soon as possible," Rubio said. "It's hard to lose like that. We have an opportunity to correct tomorrow what we did wrong today."